Last year when I was doing Landmark’s Self Expression and Leadership course, I struck up a friendship with a woman named Donna.
The course runs for four months during which participants create and implement community projects. By the end of the course, some participants were well on the way to implementing their projects; some had gone part of the way and become discouraged; and some, for a variety of existential reasons, had been stopped, pretty much from the outset.
Donna was a whole different kettle of fish. Donna created a project to establish an orphanage in Zambia. A month after the course finished she flew to Zambia, and within days, had bought a plot of land and started building.
Carrying the day
Since that time Donna’s returned to Australia and continued to raise money and interest. And this week she told me of a new development which just confirms — if I didn’t already have ample evidence — that she is a woman who can make anything happen.
So Donna’s getting my first contemporary WCD (“Women who’ve Carried the Day”) gong.
Cruel and desperate beliefs
The project Donna started is called “Zoe’s Hope” (Zambian Orphans Empowerment Support). The project aims to support two groups:
- newborn babies with “high needs”
- young “at risk” girls.
In Zambia, many orphanages do not take in very young children, especially those with “high needs”, for example, babies born premature and babies born with HIV. Zoe’s Hope aims to care for these babies until the age of two, and then re-integrate them into their extended families.
Zoe’s Hope will also care for those young girls who’ve been raped as a consequence of the cruel and desperate belief that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. These girls are often shunned by their families, and are at risk of becoming homeless and being sold into the sex industry.
The police find a baby
Since Donna started the project, one baby has become extra special. When she was in Zambia last year establishing the orphanage, the local police of the town brought her a child that had been born only 36 hours earlier and then abandoned by the side of the road.
Donna took in the baby – a little girl – and then started to think of her own daughter, Lynda, back here in Australia and how Lynda had always wanted to adopt a child of her own. So she rang Lynda and together they decided to start down the adoption path, and because the police had requested it, they named her.
They called her Zoe Hope.
Cold, hard requirements
So Zoe was taken in and cared for at the orphanage while Donna, her annual leave expired, flew back to Australia to take up her day job, raise more funds and investigate the adoption requirements. A few months later she and Lynda were dismayed to discover these requirements were onerous.
They discovered the Zambian government requires any foreigner wishing to adopt a child has to reside in Zambia for two years before the adoption and two years after the adoption. So to adopt Zoe Lynda would have to give up her new business and go and live in Zambia for a minimum of four years. The situation looked hopeless. That is, until something highly unlikely occurred.
A stranger arrives
Lynda lives in a tiny town of a few hundred residents located in the high country of Victoria. One day a few weeks ago, Lynda was in the pub having a beer when in walked a woman from Zambia. Not only was she from Zambia, she was from the very region in which the orphanage is located and knew of the orphanage.
After Lynda told her about Zoe and the adoption requirements, the woman took on the issue as her own. And just last week this woman from Zambia volunteered to adopt the baby on Lynda’s behalf. So she and Lynda are going to Zambia in July to adopt Zoe and bring her back to Australia.
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To the naked eye it may look as if a Zambian woman walking into a pub in country Victoria is an extraordinary stroke of luck. And so it is. Yet knowing Donna’s capacity to make things happen that weren’t going to happen, I can’t help thinking she was also pulling the strings somewhere.
To find out more about Zoe’s hope, go to http://www.zoeshope.org/index.html
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Donna must be an amazing woman and I wish her all the best. She deserves a gong and more!
Thanks, Thomas. I’ll pass on your good wishes. SGx
Zoe means “life” in Greek, as it happens. Very fitting. Great woman, this Donna.
Ah, how wonderful! Ta x
In our western culture we think of heroes as extroverted men of action who go into battle, and slay the enemy for king, president, country or whatever.
But it is Donna, and people like her, who are the truest of heroes.
Phil, sometimes in Aust it’s even worse; our “heroes” are sportsmen. Donna is definitely a true hero: a woman of courage, determination and love. She inspires me. SGx
Jeffrey Skoll and Pierre Omidyar of Omidyar.com might be useful resources for Donna. best of luck donna. (both co-founders of ebay)
Great. Thanks Dafna. I’ll pass it on to Donna.
Hello, this is Donna. I have just read your blog and might I add it is the first blog that I have ever read.
I am excited about my project in Zambia and how it is taking on a life of its own. I am just one personn touched by God and when god tells you to do something, you do it.
This is so easy to do because I love the people of Zambia, especially the children and especially little Zoe Hope. Zoe Hope will become the face of our project and will grow with the project.
Each time I return to Australia I return with a fierce determination to help make the lives of the orphans a bit better and when i look at all the material things that we take for granted in Australia, after I have dealt with a little girl who has been raped and she has no underpants to wear, my heart just bleeds. I cannot come back to Australia and pretend that they don’t exist. I want to build a shelter for that little girl and many like her, so that she will always have a roof over her head and sonewhere safe to live and that is the very reason that I do what I do.
I am not a hero, I am a human being who cannot stand the suffering of children and I have decided that I can do something about it and the thatd what I am doing.
Thankyou for your encouragement and support.
Love
Yor Landmark freind for life
Donna
Hello, my dear friend. Thank you for speaking so powerfully about what matters, and about Zoe. You touch, move and inspire me as always. All my love, N xx